I’m glad I’m not the only one who saw that. On the other hand, a friend of mine posted a picture of a cake decorated with the Eye of Sauron on Facebook and it was the first time I thought, whoah, why did you want a vulva cake?

Many years ago, when Girl was in about 9th grade, Wife and I had the following surreal experience:

The phone rang, and my wife answered the phone. I only heard one side of the conversation:

“No, she’s at rehearsal.

“Now THAT’S a loaded question.

“I’ll ask. Bill, what’s a stomata and a stoma?”

I gave a great husband response. “Huh?”

“R is on the phone. He’s working on his bio homework and he’s having problems understanding stomata.”

I thought for a moment, and then said, “It’s the pores on the bottom of the leaf that allows carbon dioxide in and oxygen out. The pore has two cells which open and close by swelling.”

She explained it on the phone. I could tell by the way she was explaining it that he didn’t quite understand a hole opening or closing. “Think of it as a butthole, but instead of the sphincter, it has two cells which get bigger or smaller to open or close the whole.” That satisfied him.

Then I had to ask, “What was a loaded question?”

“Oh,” she answered, “He asked if I knew anything about biology.” We laughed. A couple of possible comebacks were tossed around: “We’ve got two kids, so that would be a yes”; or, “Yeah, but we got it fixed.”

Apart from this being a remarkably surreal conversation, it made us feel pretty damn good that our kids friends will call us for help with homework, even if our kid isn’t at home.

Of course, later on, I realized that the perfect response to “What’s a stomata?” would have been, “Nothing. What’s a stomata wit’ you?”